Sandwich shop finding it hard to stay afloat

When Adam Lener started peddling sandwiches and pizzas out of a small shop near the Great Kills marinas, he never thought he would be facing criminal charges because of it.

Jamie Lee / Staten Island AdvancePortobello on the Bay is closed indefinitely, while its owner, Adam Lener deals with a slew of summons and a twisted legal battle.

But with his Portobello on the Bay eatery shuttered during the busiest season of the year, Lener has found himself more concerned with summonses than menus.

"It's like defeated we battle," said Lener, proprietor of Portobello on the Bay. "I shut a business down that was thriving. To me it's like I failed, even though the circumstances are out of my control."

The trouble all stems from a bevy of kitchen equipment installed by a previous tenant - the hood and fire suppression system on which had not been formally pressure tested.

When Lener signed a lease for the site in 2002, he maintains that he never knew there were zoning conflicts at the location and a warning issued from the city's Department of Buildings a year prior.

"(Landlord) Angelo Pignataro leased me the establishment fully-fixtured and ready to go," Lener stated, adding that unbeknownst to him, the previous occupant, Captain's Sandwich Shop, had put in extensive cooking apparatus, but was unable to get legal documentation to operate it and closed 12 months later.

"If he leased me a business knowing I couldn't operate it then it's a catch-22. I have to abide by Buildings and Fire Department codes, and right now I can't."

Pignataro, however, says that the contract was extremely clear about the parameters of the business.

"When Adam signed his lease, he leased a hero shop and ice stand," Pignataro countered, noting that when he first bought the property in 1986, it had been working as a bait and sandwich shop for years and never presented a problem.

"He didn't lease a restaurant or a pizza parlor. A hero shop comes into the classification of retail space. This place doesn't have a (certificate of occupancy) to be a restaurant. Who cares what equipment was in the store?"

In fact, the building was erected 10 years prior to the 1938 ruling requiring certificates and doesn't have one at all. It's absence is the reason why, when Fire Command, a privately licensed company, submitted an application to Buildings to conduct the needed test, it was rejected.

According to a Buildings spokesman, the area is designated as C-3, which would allow housing, community facilities or waterfront recreation. An eating and drinking establishment isn't in the mix, and the change of use for the building is what triggered the citations. Pignataro is responsible for the four Buildings issues, but the fire violation, which has since turned into a criminal summons, has left Lener on the hook for a possible felony charge.

After the initial flurry and plenty of legal expenses, though, everything subsided for a while. In fact, Lener was so secure in the belief that Pignataro's architect at Buday and Schuster LLC was going to submit the proper certificate paperwork, documentation he believed he could get a zoning waiver with and negate the tickets, that he re-upped his lease for another five years this past January.

Unfortunately, the inspectors showed up again last week, issued another criminal summons for failure to comply and the eatery was forced to lock its gates indefinitely.

According to a Fire Department spokesman, Lener would have to remove all the kitchen equipment before doing business there again.